1. Make sure you drink plenty of water.

Your brain / nervous system is doing a lot of work when you’re doing EFT and your body will need water to fuel this.

Apparently 85% of the weight of the brain is water and under normal circumstance you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day. So if you’re doing some EFT make sure keep a bottle or large glass handy.

Don’t underestimate the importance of this. I’ve heard that a lot of people are not drinking enough water as it is and this causes you to feel sluggish and slow both in your body and your mind. If you’re doing extra brain work you’ll need more water.

2. Don’t tap too hard.

I was certainly guilty of this when I first started, made evident by soreness around my eyes. If you are leaving yourself with bruises (easily done as a lot of tapping points are on sensitive skin) then you’re tapping too hard.

3. Rest

Once you’ve done a lot of EFT you might start to feel tired and you’ll need time to process everything. Most people start to tire after an hour but this varies from person to person. Don’t do anything mentally too taxing, have a nap, go for a walk or do some light reading.

Watch out for the possibility that you’re unconsciously avoiding doing the work on yourself. If you find that you are tiring quickly, say after ten minutes or so, or that you seem to get tired more easily around certain subjects, then try tapping around that tired feeling.

‘Even though I’m tired I deeply and completely accept myself’, ‘Even though I’m not in the mood to do EFT right now..’ etc.

For the first part of this article go to Gurus: The Good the Bad and the Ugly Part 1

The Bad and the Ugly

Now as I wrote about last time there seems to be enormous power behind committing to a goal, but don’t let it get too far. Sales tactics employed by gurus often involve implying that if you don’t sign up for their courses or buy their books then you aren’t committing to your goals and you won’t be able to reach them.

They try to put you in a bind, which isn’t really fair if you can’t afford it. I’ve had people try to encourage me to take out loans or use my credit card to sign up for courses costing thousands of pounds. Not a nice thing to do in my opinion.I wonder how many people get in to financial difficulty because they fail to think critically in a situation where their emotions have been pumped up.

To be honest, at some seminars I see people that haven’t smiled or felt good in years. When someone gives them permission to be happy they go all out. It’s fun to watch but they have to realise that the guru didn’t wave his magic wand and make them change. They did it themselves. It’s a bit of a head-trip when you find out how much we are in control of ourselves and how much control we willingly give away. For example when I first became interested in hypnosis I thought it was the hypnotist who was doing something to his client, then I realised that it’s the client that is doing all the work. I was a little bit disappointed at first, I thought hypnosis was a sham… until the full implications hit me.

Some people feel disappointed when they hear that a person they respect or look up to has done something they don’t approve of. No matter how succesfull they appear to be they are still humans. Infidelity, drug-use / abuse and bankruptcy will occur in their lives in the same proportions as the total population.

If you are disappointed it can be an indicator that you are investing too much into another person. At the end of the day you should only take on board what is useful for you and discard what is not. You are responsible for your own life as they are for theirs. Learn to separate the message from the person delivering it otherwise you’ll leave yourself open to disappointment and disillusion.

Finally be wary of any organisations that encourage cult like behaviour. This usually includes separating you from your family, not allowing any disagreement with the leaders, pressure to recruit new customers / clients, coercion into donating more and more money or your free time to their cause.

A feature of the personal-development scene (though present in all areas of human society) is the guru, a revered leader who has attained power, influence and followers. To be honest I hate the idea of a guru. I have respect for a lot of people but I don’t revere anyone. The reality however is that a lot of people have gurus whether they call them by that name or not.

Becoming a guru can happen in different ways; by merit, through contingency, convention or simply because they can. Examples are Richard Bandler, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra or Ken Wilber. These people are praised for being great teachers or for having deep wisdom. Others point out that they don’t always practice what they preach or even worse they are accused of being charlatans. In two articles I’ll look at what there is to learn from gurus.

The Good

One of the best books I’ve read is Influence: Science and Practice by Rober Cialdini. It was was part of my Psychology course and really opened my eyes to some of the behaviour exhibited by people. Now obviously the information in this book is presented in a way that it teaches you to either become better at persuasion, or to defend yourself against it. However the real eye-opener is the extent to which people are constantly allowing themselves to be lead (and I know I do it often enough myself). Thinking for yourself is hard work. We’d much rather other people do it for us.

Two principles from Cialdini’s book stand out for me. The power of social proof and the principle of commitment and consistency. The first is the idea that people will look to others for cues on how to behave and what to think. I can imagine why this would have been useful back in the day. If everyone else is running away from the sabre-tooth tiger maybe you should as well. Now this is just a heuristic. A basic rule of thumb that applies often enough, but not always.

In the example of a guru, the fact that a lot of people think that he is a guru must mean that he has the value to back it up right? A lot of people will say that isn’t necessarily true. But it’s at this stage that you have to think a step further. The fact that he or she is able to manoeuvre themselves into a position where they can take advantage of this points to the fact that they have the necessary communication skills, access to resources and networks.

So Tony Robbins could indeed be a cheesy over the top con-artist but the fact is that he is a famous motivational speaker means that he is doing something right. Now whether these behaviours and ways of thinking are useful for you or the world is something you have to decide for yourself. It could be that all the most ‘successful’ behaviours humans are actually leading us down a path of self-destruction, but then maybe that’s Nature / Gaia fixing a broken part of the eco-system.

The second principle I find interesting is that of commitment and consistency. People experience cognitive dissonance when they hold to contradictory behaviours, ideas or beliefs in their mind at once. That feels uncomfortable unless you’ve evolved into a zen-monk who accepts the non-exclusive duality of the universe.

If a person commits verbally or in writing to a goal then they will much more often follow through on it. That’s why it’s always such a good idea to write down your goals and tell everyone about them. I told everyone I was going to do a bungy jump in New Zealand, so I knew I couldn’t back out of it.

If people go against their word this would mean they think and act inconsistently. It would be very confusing and frustrating if we were constantly battling against ourselves to act the way we intend to. Now I know a lot of us are dealing with procrastination and lack of self-discipline but I’m talking on a level where you can not make an inference on what will happen as a result of your will. Complete random behaviour every single time.

Now the commitment and consistency principle is obviously used by gurus to get us committed to our goals, and to buying stuff from them. If we don’t commit we will leave ourselves a way out. Like the Greeks you burn your ships so you have no choice but to move towards your goal.

The crazy thing is that this opens up the possibility that you could follow a guru’s 12 step programme to becoming super motivated, commit to behaving that way and then actually achieve it through amongst other things the commitment to make it work and the fact that no one as smart as you would do something that doesn’t work. Like Dumbo you’ll be able fly A) Because you 100% believe you can and B) Because you take the leap of faith and leave yourself no room for any other possibility (except utter failure). Of course there is the danger that you’ll have some doubt not commit 100%, fail to burn all your boats and fall flat on your face like Neo when he failed to jump to the next sky-scraper. I think most of us are in the second category.

I think there is definitely something useful to investigate. It’s obvious that throughout history people have banded together and been effective in more than a mere sum of their individual powers would suggest. Can this only be done when we are following gurus and leaders? Or can we create that state in ourselves and not give away our individuality and self-determination?

A lot of people believe that some people are born with creativity. They say that those people are lucky to be a creative musician or painter. While I believe that some people might have certain physical dispositions towards particular activities, like a tall person having a better chance of making it to the NBA, it is my belief that every person has the resources to excel at whatever they choose.

Like so many other areas. Creativity is a skill that can be learned. People that are creative think, behave and act in a certain way. We can do as they do; model them in order to get similar results. Here are some ideas to increase your creativity or to behave in more creative ways.

1. Learn the skills, the rules and conventions.

You have to know the rules before you can break them. Picasso could paint life like portraits before he started to experiment with abstract styles. Find out how the art or skill is traditionally taught and follow that path. This could mean finding a teacher or mentor to guide you. It might involve doing research on someone who you admire that has results you want to achieve as well. If you want to become a great martial artist, find out how Bruce Lee trained. If you want to become a business leader find out how successful entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson made their money.

2. Discard what you’ve learned, break the rules and defy conventions.

Creativity is 90% perspiration in order to gain these afore mentioned skills and 10% knowing when to throw them out. This is where you follow your gut, your instinct, whim or muse and do what you feel like doing.

3. Interdisciplinary Inspiration.

Enjoy different kinds of media, then take the experience you get from them and see if you can translate those feelings into your chosen medium. John Frusciante, the guitar player of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is not only inspired by other guitarists, he tries to emulate vocalists as diverse as the WuTang Clan and Brandy. He is even inspired by Ricky Gervais the creator of the sit-com the Office. Maybe you could write a book inspired by a song, or start a business that has it’s core values inspired by a painting. Behave like someone who has Synesthesia. Someone who can taste shapes and smell colours.

4. Realise that the meaning of the communication is the response that you get.

You might have fancy ideas about what your project embodies, means or stands for. But everyone will interpret your work differently irrespective of your intended purpose. Now you can lament the fact that you are a misunderstood genius or use this to your advantage. You can steal or borrow ideas and themes from multiple sources to fashion your creation and people will experience it as complete and unique occurrence. They might be able to identify the influences but the parts will be subsumed into the whole.

5. Do the opposite of what you’ve done before.

When I’m playing music I’ll sometimes play it in reverse order just to find out what it sounds like. If you’re painting, why not switch around the colours to how you would normally use them; make the sky green and the grass blue. If you’re writing you could switch around any number of aspects, the motivations of the characters, their gender, paragraphs, chapters. This is similar to the cut-up technique used by poets and song writers.

6. You are always being creative, it’s just that your filters are sometimes too strong.

Finally, realise that you are always being creative. Your mind is coming up with all kinds of random ideas all the time. It’s just that you are filtering everything out. This is why some days you feel very creative (your filter is set low) while the next day you can’t come up with anything or even think that your past efforts are terrible (your filter is set too high). To get past this, you need to stop editing all your work and stop throwing stuff away. It might be that you come back in a few days and have a new appreciation for what you’ve created.

I sometimes wonder about what led me to my current interests. A lot of it has to do with all the books I’ve read and the films I’ve seen. Sometimes when I’m watching a film like Star Wars I’ll catch a particular scene that must have been one of many little memes that were planted in my mind when I first saw them.

So where did George Lucas get the memes he put in his films? He was inspired by the author Joseph Campbell who wrote a book called the Hero With A Thousand Faces which is about the arch-typical heroes journey. Campbell incorporated amongst other things some of the ideas of Carl Jung who of course had studied Buddhism and Taoism.

So when Yoda starts talking about being a luminous part of the Force and how there is no difference between himself the rock and the X-wing he is levitating, you could say that he’s another link in a chain that goes back thousands of years (at least). Whatever other value these ideas have, we can at least note how sticky they are.

Do you remember the scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi confuses the Storm Troopers by waving his hands and saying: ‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for’? Well that’s a pattern interrupt. The hypnotherapist Milton Erickson used pattern interrupts to temporarily confuse clients so that they would be momentarily more open to suggestion.

Here’s an explanation of how Derren Brown uses his Force powers for evil and entertainment.

Some people have noted the similarity between the Jedi in Star Wars and the Bene Gesserit in Dune, by Frank Herbert. The Bene Gesserit are a group that posses a skill called ‘The Voice’, which is a particular way of speaking that allows them to strongly influence and sometimes control other people. One of the themes in Dune is how language influences thought and this was inspired by Alfred Korzybski who wrote General Semantics and Science and Sanity, books that were read by Bandler and Grinder, the developers of NLP.

You’ll often hear people say that if you really want to get the best results for yourself you need to do more than just change your behaviours or even your beliefs. You need to start changing the core aspects that make up your identity.

For the moment we’ll leave aside questions of whether there is such a thing as an identity and whether or not it is made up of different aspects; Id, ego, conscious, sub-conscious etc. For our purposes ‘identity’ is all the ways in which you can finish the sentence ‘I am…’.

The first experience I had of the power of my identity was when I was 16 or 17. I had made some new friends that played in a band and for some reason I just knew that I was a great song-writer. I had never written any lyrics and had only ever played the xylophone in music class.

So I bought myself a guitar, set about teaching myself to play, and am still playing ten years later. Now whether or not I’m a good song-writer or guitar-player is subjective. But the point is that I did not and will not stop writing songs and practising the guitar until my outward experiences match those I believe to be that of a great song-writer and guitar-player. For me personally that is pride in my own work and abilities, recognition from other musicians, and people enjoying my music. I chose an identity and from that all kinds of beliefs and behaviours that were needed to get me to the end state started to flow.

Looking around I see a lot of people choosing identities for themselves, consciously or not. Unconsciously people often resort to certain stereotypes. For example if I asked you to think of a stock-market trader you’ll instantly recall a certain stereotype. You’ll have an idea of his personality, how he behaves, his interests and hobbies. Now of course everyone is an individual but stereo-types don’t come out of nowhere. Certain people are attracted to that job. Then it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle as young people that want to become traders, will start to dress, talk and act the way they think traders do. They take on the identity and the beliefs and behaviours follow.

Because I was really interested in making music I often spent time at gigs and around other musicians. The popular conception of musicians, at least those that make music like rock or hip-hop, is that alcohol and drugs are a normal part of their life-style. Now I’m not against alcohol and drugs but it’s funny to me how ingrained the idea is that drugs and alcohol fuel creativity. I don’t believe it’s at all necessary and think that the majority are just living up to some idea of what they think musicians and rock-stars ought to be.

Now that your aware of this maybe you can think about what kind of identity you’ve taken on. What beliefs and behaviours are attached to this identity. I’m talking about everything from whether or not this identity encourages you to jump out of bed in the morning, get drunk on a Friday night or keep your promises. All your beliefs and behaviours point to an identity.

So write down the phrase ‘I am…’ and finish the sentence in as many ways as you can. Then decide if the identity they describe is one that you’re happy with. Would you like to trade it, or just augment it somehow? Getting your identity right will allow all the right beliefs and behaviours to flow naturally.